Fantastic Fest, the largest genre film festival in the U.S., specializing in horror, fantasy, sci-fi, action and just plain fantastic movies from all around the world, starts here in Austin in just 2 days.
As a lead up, I’m previewing the movies that I’m planning on attending and blogging about over the course of the week long festival.
Tuesday, September 27th
JULIA X
P.J. Pettiette 2011 | 3D, Black Comedy, Feature, Guest in attendance, Horror | 92 min.
Credited only as The Stranger, Kevin Sorbo’s character in JULIA X 3D (much like in real life) is completely irresistible to women. Turns out the ladies should learn to exercise a bit of caution for, you see, The Stranger is a serial killer. Meeting women on the Internet and setting up dates, The Stranger brings his victims back for a little bit of torture and murder and then brands each one with the next letter in the alphabet. He’s been up to it for a while, too, as his latest victim sports a “W.” However, things don‚Äôt go quite according to plan on his latest excursion as Julia is on to his game and has no intention of becoming his “X”.
The fun of JULIA X 3D comes in the form of some clever bending of expectations and surprises peppered throughout. Sorbo is as charismatic as he’s ever been and his interactions with Julia- their relationship becoming increasingly complicated far exceeding one of just simply hunter and prey- are hilarious. Things do get violent and bloody as other characters are introduced into the mix (including an appearance from Joel Moore) and power struggles get heated.
Director P.J. Pettiette never lets JULIA X 3D’s tone become too serious, it’s a horror movie hellbent on the audience having as much fun as possible. However, it does have a few interesting things to say about gender politics which it does by providing characters that both flip stereotypes in inventive ways and ones that adhere painfully to them. Which is all well and good but, really, it’s all about Sorbo in 3D! (Brian Kelley) Presented by REAL D 3D
HAUNTERS
Kim Min-suk 2010 | Action, Feature, Thriller | 114 min.
50% horror movie, 50% superhero film and 100% Korean thriller, this is one dark, super-powered ride that became a big hit when it was released. Seoul, 1991: A little boy with a prosthetic leg is blindfolded, stumbling through the rain, clinging to his mother’s wrist. She orders him not to remove the blindfold, but when they reach home his abusive father begins beating his mother. In response, the boy removes the blindfold and uses his strange, glittering gaze to make Dad snap his own neck. When his mother fails to kill her telepathic spawn in his sleep, he wanders off into the night, a white-suited phantom lurking on the fringes of humanity, with only his model city to keep him company. From his vantage point, the rest of the world simply looks like…toys.
Seoul, 2010: Kyu-Nam (TV star Koo So) is an out-of-work laborer looking for a new gig. He answers an ad from the local pawn shop and everything seems to be going well until, on his first day of work, the silver-haired mystery man (Korean heartthrob, Gang Dong-Won, of Secret Reunion and M fame) walks in and begins robbing the till. Everyone in the store is helpless against his omnipotent glittering eyes – everyone except Kyu-Nam. So begins a mind-bending game of cat and mouse, with an entire city set against our working-class hero, who must band together with his screwed-up, foreign pals to take down an evil, psychic god who uses every single soul in Seoul as his pawns in a deadly hunt to eradicate the one man who can stand against him.
The directorial debut of Kim Min-Suk, the screenwriter behind The Good, The Bad and the Weird, HAUNTERS is the dizzying lovechild of Unbreakable and The Fugitive, a genre beast that mixes pulse-pounding thrills with gut-wrenching moments like a woman forced to toss her helpless baby in front of a speeding train. This box office hit from Korea shows the dark side of the X-men, portraying a world where the only people with superpowers are psychopaths and it’s up the normal folks to step up and shut them down. (NYAFF)
Melancholia
Lars von Trier | Drama, Feature, Sci-Fi | 120 min.
Not-so-enfant-terrible Lars von Trier (Breaking the Waves) managed to get himself tossed out of this year’s Cannes Film Festival for allegedly voicing sympathy for the Nazis, but this didn’t stop his latest picture, Melancholia, from being nominated for the Palme d’Or. The story is a mash up of Armageddon and The Celebration, with Ingmar Bergman’s Persona tossed in for good measure. It takes its title from the name of an outsized planet lurking behind the sun which threatens to obliterate the earth and end life as we know it. But the approaching Melancholia quickly becomes a metaphor for the emotional malaise of two sisters, played by Kirsten Dunst, in the finest performance of her career (she won Best Actress at Cannes), and Charlotte Gainsbourg. Also catch Kiefer Sutherland and Alexander Skarsgard in supporting roles. Played the New York and Toronto film festivals.
Fantastic Fest preview Day 6 was originally published on The Geek Curmudgeon